Chapter 4. The Core
"Lieutenant Schwar!"
Schwar looked at Private Cantrell. She was about 5 7", and had short dark hair.
"We saw something weird on virtua-sonar. Corporal Lambert thought you would like to take a look." She informed him.
"Let me guess… the UAAC wants the station finished early, so they sent us supplies we don't need on an automated ship without any damn workers!" He said it with a very small growl.
"No sir, I think it's more complicated than that!" she said, motioning for him to follow her.
She's got some real nerve, he thought. But he would let this one go. He knew she would only act like this if she thought it was important. They walked for a few minutes and went into a dark room with several computers and a few men, including Corporal Zenegger "Zee" Lambert, Corporal Alen Harrigan and ECA L. Bishop 229-J. Zee walked up to them as Bishop prepared one of the newer computers. It had always seemed odd to Cantrell that they had so many computers from the 1970's in such a high tech place, but she had heard it was in order to store excess data or something.
"What's so damn important that you had to send your attack dog to get me?" Schwar said with complete lack of concern for Cantrell's feelings. She pretended to be annoyed, but they both knew she didn't care.
"Look at this sonar scan." Zee said with a strange look in his eyes. Was he actually scared? The four of them walked over to Bishop.
"Look at this sonar scan from fifteen minutes ago." Said Bishop. There was absolutely nothing. Schwar glared at the others.
"Before you break something, look at this power scan from the same time." Zee said as Bishop pulled up a file. This time there was a faint reading.
"The hell is that?" Schwar asked.
"A ship," Bishop stated calmly. "…one with some sort of cloaking device."
Schwar was still angry, but now he was also confused.
"Now look at this external camera view." Bishop pulled up another file. "Look very carefully at this image." Bishop said. It was just an average bit of footage of stars.
"There!" he said. Schwar hadn't seen anything, although Cantrell thought she might have seen something. Bishop zoomed in on one spot and replayed the footage. This time Schwar spotted it. It was a relatively small object, moving to the station. It was very difficult to see though, because it was completely transparent! Harrigan spoke for the first time since they had arrived.
"This may be related to project X, or a coincidence. But either way, there's no way a human built anything close to that!"
"Where is this thing now?" Schwar asked.
"Well, the energy reading just disappeared out of the camera's range." Zee said. "It must have powered down to a stop!"
Schwar repeated his question.
"WHERE?"
Zee couldn't say it, so Harrigan did.
"The unfinished gap at D12."
Schwar froze.
"Are you telling me Alen, that an intelligent species may be attempting to make contact, and they found the one fing weakness in the station!?!"
"I can't…"
The station's main super computer "Brother" activated an alarm!
"Code blue at: D12!"
Schwar looked at Harrigan.
"Get a boarding party in a UD-4 in half an hour or I swear to god that you won't live to see your kids again!"
He turned to Cantrell.
"Grab a ZX and go to the team at D12!"
Last was Zee.
"Get these readings to L4 and have them send a conestega ship before we get killed by a god damn stormtrooper!"
He ran to the computer and began to type away.
"And somebody get me my M56 or I'll start killing these things by hand!"
Cantrell was already headed for the armory when she ran into the fully armed team headed for D12. They had full space suits and each had M41A Pulse rifles strapped to their under arms, and ZX Shotguns tied to their backs. They ran into the airlock, and the commander of the group screamed out orders.
"Emergency procedure beta! Get a line to them before they get sucked out of range!"
Cantrell peaked out the airlock, and saw that two construction workers that were too stupid to tie themselves to the wall had lost their grip and were barely hanging on to an extra pipe sticking out of the wall. One of the marines tied a steel rope around his waist and jumped out to grab them. He finally got his hands around one of the men, while another marine did the same.
Cantrell set her radio to Schwar's frequency.
"False alarm sir, just some retards that almost got themselves sucked into the planet's orbit."
"Well we're going into DEFCON 3 level until Harrigan can find and board the codename PREDATOR ship."
The hairs on the back of Cantrell's neck stood up. She looked around but all she saw was the construction workers being dragged into the airlock.
She still had the feeling of being watched. She decided to ignore it and hit the showers, but in her mind she stayed battle ready.